George Kennedy will be familiar to almost any student of rhetoric or
ancient literary criticism. He has written or edited several oft-cited
works on the subject, such as The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman
World, 300 B.C.-A.D. 300 (Princeton 1972), Classical
Rhetoric and its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern
Times (North Carolina 1980), and the first volume of the Cambridge
History of Literary Criticism (1989). Now emerges what looks
like the culmination of years of thought about rhetoric on a broad scale,
as the subtitle explains, and Kennedy's reputation places him on a pedestal
from which praise from someone of my station would scarcely be audible;
however, this review will not be the encomium that might be expected.

The book contains nine chapters and a conclusion, with chapter titles
such as "Rhetoric among Social Animals," Rhetoric in Aboriginal
Australian Culture," "North American Indian Rhetoric," and
"Rhetoric in Ancient India." In textbook-like style, the chapters
are sketches of scholarship on the topics addressed, with subsequent lists
of references and bibliographies -- further indications that this might
be intended as a textbook.

At the start, Kennedy wants everyone aware of what's ahead: "Comparative
Rhetoric is the cross-cultural study of rhetorical traditions as they exist
or have existed in different societies around the world" (1). He is
out to "identify what is universal" in order "to formulate
a General Theory of Rhetoric that will apply in all societies. This would
be the innate or 'deep' rhetorical faculty that we all share ...."
The babel of tongues in the world can be reduced to a General Rhetoric.
Such an attempt at universality and generality sounds daunting, until Kennedy
excuses himself: "Neither I nor any one else I know of is competent
to give an authoritative account of the rhetorical practices of these many
different cultures, primarily because no one has the requisite knowledge
of the many languages and societies of the world" (2). Despite this
self-knowledge and standard use of adynaton, Kennedy forges ahead with
the project, and declares that he will offer a "new" approach,
suggesting implicitly that this approach will give us the truth about rhetoric.
For instance, he argues "that rhetoric is a natural phenomenon"
(4), like a bird call, and this claim turns out to be a subset of a larger
view that rhetoric is part of Darwinian evolution, and that there is an
"evolution of speech" (31, cf. opening of chapter 1). On Kennedy's
model human beings move from harsh, brutish, instinctive sounds to conscious
reflection on the uses of language, from emitting energetic signs of self-preservation
to practicing self-consciously rhetoric and philosophy.

However, "[T]he scholars of hominid history are uncovering a constantly
larger past in which the earlier members of our species continually appear
to be smarter, more accomplished, more adept, and more complex than we
had previously believed.... We have no way of knowing what the verbal arts
of 35,000 years ago might have been. It is most likely that the languages
of that time were in no way inferior in complexity, sophistication, or
richness to the languages spoken today".1
Gary Snyder comes to
this conclusion based on some exchanges with the eminent linguist William
Bright. The point is, at the very least, that Kennedy's supercessionist,
or call it progressivist, history of linguistic usage is in dispute. Furthermore,
appropriating Darwin for a more accurate, scientific view ignores evidence
that indicates Darwin's own evolutionary theory emerged, in part, from
19th-century language theory. Gillian Beer explains: "[M]uch important
nineteenth-century scientific work, particularly that of Lyell in geology
and Darwin in evolutionary theory, drew upon the new models of language
development".2 Thus, on one reading,
Kennedy's book replays
19th-century
debates about language.

Through much of the book, Kennedy acts as a kind of rhetorical anthropologist,
surveying numerous "traditional cultures," and finding that linguistically,
these cultures are neither alien nor "exotic," but that they
too can be seen to be practicing rhetoric to one degree or another. On
the anthropological side of the issue, Kennedy comes down squarely in the
world of Edward Evans-Pritchard, the English anthropologist best known
for his study of the Azande tribe, a work which Kennedy cites. Kennedy's
take on the Azande is symptomatic of much of his treatment of the societies
he calls "nonliterate." Evans-Pritchard, unable to help being
a 20th-century intellectual who knows about science, sees the Azande as
"primitive" in the sense that the tribe's members believe in
magic. Kennedy opts for the phrase "traditional society" rather
than "primitive society," though the upshot of the description
tends to be the same, given, for instance, that this discussion appears
in a section labeled "Formal Speech in Some Nonliterate Cultures."
What we learn is that "our" views of language are far in advance
of the Azande, or for any of the other groups in the section, and thus
can be subject to Kennedy's categorizations and analyses of the "deep"
rhetorical faculties "we" all share. Perhaps here it would be
appropriate to recall Ludwig Wittgenstein's "Remarks on Frazer's Golden
Bough": "Identifying one's own gods with the gods of
other peoples. One convinces oneself that the names have the same
meaning".3 Replace the word "gods"
with
"rhetoric" in Wittgenstein's
first sentence, and you have Wittgenstein speaking prudently to Kennedy.

In considering the Azande through the lens of Evans-Pritchard, Kennedy
does not address Peter Winch's reply to Evans-Pritchard in a famous essay
entitled "Understanding a Primitive Society",4 which makes
a compelling case for babel; that is, that there are multiple languages,
and it won't do to import into one language a concept of rationality (read:
rhetoric) that has application only in one other. Winch does not endorse
cultural relativism. Rather, he hopes to serve notice that describing other
cultures in "our" own terms risks making "our" terms
the only conceivable ones. Evaluating other cultures according to the posited
universal criteria in a General Rhetoric will likely mean that one finds
rhetoric everywhere, just as one presupposed, even in places where people
know nothing of rhetoric. Kennedy anticipates this argument: "I have
no desire to impose Western notions of rhetoric on an understanding of
other cultures. Indeed, my objective is rather the opposite: to modify
Western notions by comparison with other traditions in the interests of
coming to an understanding of rhetoric as a more general phenomenon of
human life" (217). Yet, on the very next page, Kennedy writes, "Exclusively
oral societies usually think in specific terms and feel little need to
erect systems of abstract thought. Their religion too is primarily mythological,
not philosophical. Abstract, theoretical thought and precepts about rhetoric,
as about philosophy, politics, and nature, are developments of literate
societies..." (218). Rhetoric becomes a system superior to every utterance
that it makes possible. A "General Rhetoric" calls for grand
generalizations, and, at times, Kennedy catches himself in excess: "Generalization
about traditional North American Indian rhetoric is difficult because much
of the evidence comes from white sources or from speeches intended to influence
whites and because of differences among Indian cultures" (108). The
announced goal is "to formulate a General Theory of Rhetoric that
will apply in all societies," regardless of differences among them,
Indian or otherwise. When dealing with rhetoric on a universal scale in
a little over 200 pages, there's little time to pause for particulars that
might function as speed bumps.

"Finally, I have been much impressed by the generally conservative
function of rhetoric all over the world, which seems to help confirm my
suggestion that rhetoric has its origin in the instinct for self-preservation
and is a form of energy transmitted through signs to persuade an audience
to act in securing or preserving the best interests of the speaker,"
(230) contends Kennedy, even if it's not clear that objections would arise
to this fairly conservative, common sensical view. My own sense is that
once Kennedy posits rhetoric's ubiquity without exploring counter-arguments,
his case is made for him. With a view that human speech arises "out
of already existing primate practices" (33), Kennedy declares himself
an evolutionist, more scientist than rhetorician. "Human languages
developed from animal communication" (43). Strangely, this does not
lead him to Heideggerian-like questions,5
such as: What does it
mean
that language is not anything human? What does it mean to think that experience
with language never occurs in the speaking of it? Language, on Kennedy's
view, is a byproduct of experience. A human needs to warn others about
X, and so the human yells. Or the human has certain self-interests best
served by a certain kind of talking to a particular audience, a kind of
talking that has been successful in obtaining results in the past, and
so might work again in a new circumstance. The evolutionist has a theory
of language, focused on control and the production of predictable consequences,
that experiences with language do not verify. That is why the Tower of
Babel is not an evolutionist's story, but his enemy's. Kennedy proffers
not babel, but an Esperanto he calls "General Rhetoric."